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Burlington House, London

Burlington House was built in 1664 as a private mansion for Sir John Denham. In 1668, he sold it to Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Burlington, who gave the building its present name. It was later passed to the Cavendish family. In 1854, the government purchased Burlington House and allocated it to the Royal Academy’s temporary art exhibitions as well as numerous learned societies such as the Geological Society of London, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. It is a Grade II* building.

Timeline of Events Associated with Burlington House, London

On 6 March 1867, the Royal Academy signed the lease for its new premises at Burlington House. The Academy had previously shared the premises of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The move was prompted by a Royal Commission report of 1863 that recommended that both institutions required additional space. Image: William Shipley, Nineteenth-Century Illustration of the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly, London. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

On 19 February 1869, T.H. Huxley delivers “Geological Reform,” his Presidential Address to the Geological Society of London. Image: Photograph of Thomas Henry Huxley (c. 1880). Print by Lock & Whitfield. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

The address is a direct, forensic response to William Thomson’s attack on Geology’s temporal vistas and the evolutionary science that depended on its time scale. Thomson replied on April 5 with “On Geological Dynamics,” again addressing the Geological Society of Glasgow.